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The capivari—a currency named after a rodent—circulates only in one dusty, agricultural town 60 miles north of Rio de Janeiro.

Ten months after introduction of the capivari—named after the capybara, a pig-sized rodent common in a local river—the currency is lifting fortunes of local retailers and gnawing holes in the pockets of consumers. Capivaris pay for everything from haircuts to restaurant tabs to tithing at churches. The mayor even has plans to open a "Capivari Megastore," where local artisans and growers can showcase wares.

The capivari is one of 63 local moneys—including bills named after the sun, cactus and the Brazil nut—now circulating in needy neighborhoods throughout Latin America's biggest economy. The idea is gaining currency as towns seek a share of current economic growth. This month, a new local currency hit the streets in Cidade de Deus, the Rio slum that was the subject of a blockbuster film and a stop on President Barack Obama's South American tour this year.

While equal in value to the real, local currencies gain traction because local merchants offer discounts when using them. No one is forced to quit the real, but shopkeepers say greater volumes make the markdown worthwhile.

"It brings customers through the door," said Roseanne Augusto, manager of a Silva Jardim hardware store, where a builder one recent afternoon set aside 2,700 reais in supplies, about $1,520 worth. He then left the store, went to trade reais, and returned to pay with capivaris, saving 5%.

Capivaris are managed by a new, community-run Capivari Bank. Inside its one office, a brightly painted space the size of a small fast-food joint, are the bank's employees, three women in their 20s.

For each of the 50,000 capivaris first circulated, Capivari Bank holds an equal number of reais on deposit at a traditional bank.

The chiemgauer, a school currency project in southern Germany, is the envy of other currency schemes as shoppers opt for local cash to spend in local shops...

It started as a school project by Christian Gelleri, an economics teacher in southern Germany who wanted to teach a group of 16-year-olds about finance in a novel way – by creating their own money, to be used in local shops and businesses. They called it the "chiemgauer" and eight years on, the project has turned into the world's most successful alternative currency.

Last year turnover reached €5.1m, and the chiemgauer, named after a region in Bavaria, is now accepted by more than 600 businesses in the Rosenheim-Traunstein area where it operates. It is estimated that around 2,500 people regularly use the currency and along the way it has also earned more than €100,000 for local non-profit organisations.

What makes the chiemgauer different to conventional currency is that it automatically loses value if you don't spend it. Unlike traditional money that can be saved, the chiemgauer is only valid for three months – the idea being that it must be spent, thereby boosting the local economy. If the notes aren't spent, they can be renewed by buying a stamp that costs 2% of the note's face value – so over a year, the currency depreciates 8%. Notes can be renewed up to seven times.

One way to define ‘social currency’ is as recorded reputation. The currencies of the emerging reputation economy will be symbols like badges, club memberships, links and Twitter lists, all of which help to lock in reputation gains within a community or scene. While opportunities to do what you love for money are hard to come by, there is no limit to the amount of social currency you can earn to demonstrate your skills and commitment.

So why wait? Here’s a short guide to printing your own social currency, and what to do with it...

VideoThere's a strange new world out there of alternative currencies - strange new methods for paying for goods and services both online and off.

Clearly they don't quite know what to make of those alternative currencies that are developing here and there, but Eric Savitz of Forbes bravely interviews Stan Stalnaker, founder of Hub Culture, which has issued a new currency called the Ven.

New Mexico's House of Representatives voted Monday to pass a bill that allows the state to move $2 billion - $5 billion of state funds to credit unions and small banks.

Ben Dyson: The greatest privatisation in history has gone unnoticed.

Here's how it works. When you ask the bank for the money to buy a one-bedroom box in London, the money that appears in your account isn't borrowed from some prudent grandmother's life savings. In fact, the bank simply types those numbers into your account, creating brand new money that you can now spend. As other banks do exactly the same, the amount of money in the economy grows and grows. Every new mortgage creates new money, which pushes up house prices just a little more and forces the next buyer to borrow even more from the banks. (A more detailed and fully-referenced explanation of this process is given in the book Where Does Money Come From? published by the New Economics Foundation.)

Through this process of creating money, banks have been able to inflate the money supply at a rate of 11.5% a year, pushing up the prices of houses and pricing out an entire generation.

Of course, the flipside to this creation of money is that with every new loan comes a new debt. This is the source of our mountain of personal debt – not money that had been prudently saved up by pensioners, but money that was created out of nothing by banks and lent to anyone and everyone.